A CHRISTMAS TREE
BY
CHARLES DICKENS
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COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Short Story: “A Christmas Tree”
Author: Charles Dickens, 1812–70
First published: 1850
The original short story is in the public domain in the
United States and in most, if not all, other countries as well.
Readers outside the United States should check their own
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download this e-story. The Online Books Page has an FAQ
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This PDF ebook was
created by José Menéndez.
I HAVE been looking on, this evening, at a merry company of
children assembled round that pretty German toy, a
Christmas Tree. The tree was planted in the middle of a great
round table, and towered high above their heads. It was
brilliantly lighted by a multitude of little tapers; and
everywhere sparkled and glittered with bright objects. There
were rosy-cheeked dolls, hiding behind the green leaves; and
there were real watches (with movable hands, at least, and an
endless capacity of being wound up) dangling from
innumerable twigs; there were French-polished tables,
chairs, bedsteads, wardrobes, eight-day clocks, and various
other articles of domestic furniture (wonderfully made, in
tin, at Wolverhampton), perched among the boughs, as if in
preparation for some fairy housekeeping; there were jolly,
broad-faced little men, much more agreeable in appearance
than many real men—and no wonder, for their heads took
off, and showed them to be full of sugar-plums; there were
fiddles and drums; there were tambourines, books, work-
boxes, paint-boxes, sweetmeat-boxes, peep-show boxes, and
all kinds of boxes; there were trinkets for the elder girls, far
brighter than any grown-up gold and jewels; there were
baskets and pincushions in all devices; there were guns,
swords, and banners; there were witches standing in
enchanted rings of pasteboard, to tell fortunes; there were
teetotums, humming-tops, needle-cases, pen-wipers,
smelling-bottles, conversation-cards, bouquet-holders; real
fruit, made artificially dazzling with gold leaf; imitation
apples, pears, and walnuts, crammed with surprises; in short,
as a pretty child, before me, delightedly whispered to another
pretty child, her bosom friend, “There was everything, and
more.” This motley collection of odd objects, clustering on
3
4 A CHRISTMAS TREE
the tree like magic fruit, and flashing back the bright looks
directed towards it from every side—some of the diamond-
eyes admiring it were hardly on a level with the table, and a
few were languishing in timid wonder on the bosoms of
pretty mothers, aunts, and nurses—made a lively realisation
of the fancies of childhood; and set me thinking how all the
trees that grow and all the things that come into existence on
the earth, have their wild adornments at that well-
remembered time.
Being now at home again, and alone, the only person in
the house awake, my thoughts are drawn back, by a
fascination which I do not care to resist, to my own
childhood. I begin to consider, what do we all remember best
upon the branches of the Christmas Tree of our own young
Christmas days, by which we climbed to real life.
Straight, in the middle of the room, cramped in the
freedom of its growth by no encircling walls or soon-reached
ceiling, a shadowy tree arises; and, looking up into the
dreamy brightness of its top—for I observe in this tree the
singular property that it appears to grow downward towards
the earth—I look into my youngest Christmas recollections!
All toys at first, I find. Up yonder, among the green
holly and red berries, is the Tumbler with his hands in his
pockets, who wouldn’t lie down, but whenever he was put
upon the floor, persisted in rolling his fat body about, until
he rolled himself still, and brought those lobster eyes of his
to bear upon me—when I affected to laugh very much, but in
my heart of hearts was extremely doubtful of him. Close
beside him is that infernal snuff-box, out of which there
sprang a demoniacal Counsellor in a black gown, with an
obnoxious head of hair, and a red cloth mouth, wide open,
who was not to be endured on any terms, but could not be
put away either; for he used suddenly, in a highly magnified
state, to fly out of Mammoth Snuff-boxes in dreams, when
CHARLES DICKENS 5
least expected. Nor is the frog with cobbler’s wax on his tail,
far off; for there was no knowing where he wouldn’t jump;
and when he flew over the candle, and came upon one’s
hand with that spotted back—red on a green ground—he was
horrible. The cardboard lady in a blue-silk skirt, who was
stood up against the candlestick to dance, and whom I see on
the same branch, was milder, and was beautiful; but I can’t
say as much for the larger cardboard man, who used to be
hung against the wall and pulled by a string; there was a
sinister expression in that nose of his; and when he got his
legs round his neck (which he very often did), he was
ghastly, and not a creature to be alone with.
When did that dreadful Mask first look at me? Who put
it on, and why was I so frightened that the sight of it is an era
in my life? It is not a hideous visage in itself; it is even
meant to be droll; why then were its stolid features so
intolerable? Surely not because it hid the wearer’s face. An
apron would have done as much; and though I should have
preferred even the apron away, it would not have been
absolutely insupportable, like the mask. Was it the
immovability of the mask? The doll’s face was immovable,
but I was not afraid of her. Perhaps that fixed and set change
coming over a real face, infused into my quickened heart
some remote suggestion and dread of the universal change
that is to come on every face, and make it still? Nothing
reconciled me to it. No drummers, from whom proceeded a
melancholy chirping on the turning of a handle; no regiment
of soldiers, with a mute band, taken out of a box, and fitted,
one by one, upon a stiff and lazy little set of lazy-tongs; no
old woman, made of wires and a brown-paper composition,
cutting up a pie for two small children; could give me a
permanent comfort, for a long time. Nor was it any
satisfaction to be shown the Mask, and see that it was made
of paper, or to have it locked up and be assured that no one
6 A CHRISTMAS TREE
wore it. The mere recollection of that fixed face, the mere
knowledge of its existence anywhere, was sufficient to
awake me in the night all perspiration and horror, with, “O I
know it’s coming! O the mask!”
I never wondered what the dear old donkey with the
panniers—there he is! was made of, then! His hide was real
to the touch, I recollect. And the great black horse with the
round red spots all over him—the horse that I could even get
upon—I never wondered what had brought him to that
strange condition, or thought that such a horse was not
commonly seen at Newmarket. The four horses of no colour,
next to him, that went into the waggon of cheeses, and could
be taken out and stabled under the piano, appear to have bits
of fur-tippet for their tails, and other bits for their manes, and
to stand on pegs instead of legs, but it was not so when they
were brought home for a Christmas present. They were all
right, then; neither was their harness unceremoniously nailed
into their chests, as appears to be the case now. The tinkling
works of the music-cart, I did find out, to be made of quill
tooth-picks and wire; and I always thought that little tumbler
in his shirt sleeves, perpetually swarming up one side of a
wooden frame, and coming down, head foremost, on the
other, rather a weak-minded person—though good-natured;
but the Jacob’s Ladder, next him, made of little squares of
red wood, that went flapping and clattering over one another,
each developing a different picture, and the whole enlivened
by small bells, was a mighty marvel and a great delight.
Ah! The Doll’s house!—of which I was not proprietor,
but where I visited. I don’t admire the Houses of Parliament
half so much as that stone-fronted mansion with real glass
windows, and door-steps, and a real balcony—greener than I
ever see now, except at watering places; and even they afford
but a poor imitation. And though it did open all at once, the
entire house-front (which was a blow, I admit, as cancelling
CHARLES DICKENS 7
the fiction of a staircase), it was but to shut it up again, and I
could believe. Even open, there were three distinct rooms in
it: a sitting-room and bed-room, elegantly furnished, and best
of all, a kitchen, with uncommonly soft fire-irons, a plentiful
assortment of diminutive utensils—oh, the warming-pan!—
and a tin man-cook in profile, who was always going to fry
two fish. What Barmecide justice have I done to the noble
feasts wherein the set of wooden platters figured, each with
its own peculiar delicacy, as a ham or turkey, glued tight on
to it, and garnished with something green, which I recollect
as moss! Could all the Temperance Societies of these later
days, united, give me such a tea-drinking as I have had
through the means of yonder little set of blue crockery,
which really would hold liquid (it ran out of the small
wooden cask, I recollect, and tasted of matches), and which
made tea, nectar. And if the two legs of the ineffectual little
sugar-tongs did tumble over one another, and want purpose,
like Punch’s hands, what does it matter? And if I did once
shriek out, as a poisoned child, and strike the fashionable
company with consternation, by reason of having drunk a
little teaspoon, inadvertently dissolved in too hot tea, I was
never the worse for it, except by a powder!
Upon the next branches of the tree, lower down, hard by
the green roller and miniature gardening-tools, how thick the
books begin to hang. Thin books, in themselves, at first, but
many of them, and with deliciously smooth covers of bright
red or green. What fat black letters to begin with! “A was an
archer, and shot at a frog.” Of course he was. He was an
apple-pie also, and there he is! He was a good many things in
his time, was A, and so were most of his friends, except X,
who had so little versatility, that I never knew him to get
beyond Xerxes or Xantippe—like Y, who was always
confined to a Yacht or a Yew Tree; and Z condemned for
ever to be a Zebra or a Zany. But, now, the very tree itself
8 A CHRISTMAS TREE
changes, and becomes a bean-stalk—the marvellous bean-
stalk up which Jack climbed to the Giant’s house! And now,
those dreadfully interesting, double-headed giants, with their
clubs over their shoulders, begin to stride along the boughs
in a perfect throng, dragging knights and ladies home for
dinner by the hair of their heads. And Jack—how noble, with
his sword of sharpness, and his shoes of swiftness! Again
those old meditations come upon me as I gaze up at him; and
I debate within myself whether there was more than one Jack
(which I am loth to believe possible), or only one genuine
original admirable Jack, who achieved all the recorded
exploits.
Good for Christmas-time is the ruddy colour of the
cloak, in which—the tree making a forest of itself for her to
trip through, with her basket—Little Red Riding-Hood
comes to me one Christmas Eve to give me information of
the cruelty and treachery of that dissembling Wolf who ate
her grandmother, without making any impression on his
appetite, and then ate her, after making that ferocious joke
about his teeth. She was my first love. I felt that if I could
have married Little Red Riding-Hood, I should have known
perfect bliss. But, it was not to be; and there was nothing for
it but to look out the Wolf in the Noah’s Ark there, and put
him late in the procession on the table, as a monster who was
to be degraded. O the wonderful Noah’s Ark! It was not
found seaworthy when put in a washing-tub, and the animals
were crammed in at the roof, and needed to have their legs
well shaken down before they could be got in, even there—
and then, ten to one but they began to tumble out at the door,
which was but imperfectly fastened with a wire latch—but
what was that against it! Consider the noble fly, a size or two
smaller than the elephant: the lady-bird, the butterfly—all
triumphs of art! Consider the goose, whose feet were so
small, and whose balance was so indifferent, that he usually
CHARLES DICKENS 9
tumbled forward, and knocked down all the animal creation.
Consider Noah and his family, like idiotic tobacco-stoppers;
and how the leopard stuck to warm little fingers; and how the
tails of the larger animals used gradually to resolve
themselves into frayed bits of string!
Hush! Again a forest, and somebody up in a tree—not
Robin Hood, not Valentine, not the Yellow Dwarf (I have
passed him and all Mother Bunch’s wonders, without
mention), but an Eastern King with a glittering scimitar and
turban. By Allah! two Eastern Kings, for I see another,
looking over his shoulder! Down upon the grass, at the tree’s
foot, lies the full length of a coal-black Giant, stretched
asleep, with his head in a lady’s lap; and near them is a glass
box, fastened with four locks of shining steel, in which he
keeps the lady prisoner when he is awake. I see the four keys
at his girdle now. The lady makes signs to the two kings in
the tree, who softly descend. It is the setting-in of the bright
Arabian Nights.
Oh, now all common things become uncommon and
enchanted to me. All lamps are wonderful; all rings are
talismans. Common flower-pots are full of treasure, with a
little earth scattered on the top; trees are for Ali Baba to hide
in; beef-steaks are to throw down into the Valley of
Diamonds, that the precious stones may stick to them, and be
carried by the eagles to their nests, whence the traders, with
loud cries, will scare them. Tarts are made, according to the
recipe of the Vizier’s son of Bussorah, who turned
pastrycook after he was set down in his drawers at the gate
of Damascus; cobblers are all Mustaphas, and in the habit of
sewing up people cut into four pieces, to whom they are
taken blind-fold.
Any iron ring let into stone is the entrance to a cave
which only waits for the magician, and the little fire, and the
necromancy, that will make the earth shake. All the dates
10 A CHRISTMAS TREE
imported come from the same tree as that unlucky date, with
whose shell the merchant knocked out the eye of the genie’s
invisible son. All olives are of the stock of that fresh fruit,
concerning which the Commander of the Faithful overheard
the boy conduct the fictitious trial of the fraudulent olive
merchant; all apples are akin to the apple purchased (with
two others) from the Sultan’s gardener for three sequins, and
which the tall black slave stole from the child. All dogs are
associated with the dog, really a transformed man, who
jumped upon the baker’s counter, and put his paw on the
piece of bad money. All rice recalls the rice which the awful
lady, who was a ghoule, could only peck by grains, because
of her nightly feasts in the burial-place. My very rocking-
horse,—there he is, with his nostrils turned completely
inside-out, indicative of Blood!—should have a peg in his
neck, by virtue thereof to fly away with me, as the wooden
horse did with the Prince of Persia, in the sight of all his
father’s Court.
Yes, on every object that I recognise among those upper
branches of my Christmas Tree, I see this fairy light! When I
wake in bed, at daybreak, on the cold, dark, winter mornings,
the white snow dimly beheld, outside, through the frost on
the window-pane, I hear Dinarzade. “Sister, sister, if you are
yet awake, I pray you finish the history of the Young King of
the Black Islands.” Scheherazade replies, “If my lord the
Sultan will suffer me to live another day, sister, I will not
only finish that, but tell you a more wonderful story yet.”
Then, the gracious Sultan goes out, giving no orders for the
execution, and we all three breathe again.
At this height of my tree I begin to see, cowering
among the leaves—it may be born of turkey, or of pudding,
or mince pie, or of these many fancies, jumbled with
Robinson Crusoe on his desert island, Philip Quarll among
the monkeys, Sandford and Merton with Mr. Barlow, Mother
CHARLES DICKENS 11
Bunch, and the Mask—or it may be the result of indigestion,
assisted by imagination and over-doctoring—a prodigious
nightmare. It is so exceedingly indistinct, that I don’t know
why it’s frightful—but I know it is. I can only make out that
it is an immense array of shapeless things, which appear to
be planted on a vast exaggeration of the lazy-tongs that used
to bear the toy soldiers, and to be slowly coming close to my
eyes, and receding to an immeasurable distance. When it
comes closest, it is worse. In connection with it I descry
remembrances of winter nights incredibly long; of being sent
early to bed, as a punishment for some small offence, and
waking in two hours, with a sensation of having been asleep
two nights; of the laden hopelessness of morning ever
dawning; and the oppression of a weight of remorse.
And now, I see a wonderful row of little lights rise
smoothly out of the ground, before a vast green curtain.
Now, a bell rings—a magic bell, which still sounds in my
ears unlike all other bells—and music plays, amidst a buzz of
voices, and a fragrant smell of orange-peel and oil. Anon, the
magic bell commands the music to cease, and the great green
curtain rolls itself up majestically, and The Play begins! The
devoted dog of Montargis avenges the death of his master,
foully murdered in the Forest of Bondy; and a humorous
Peasant with a red nose and a very little hat, whom I take
from this hour forth to my bosom as a friend (I think he was
a Waiter or an Hostler at a village Inn, but many years have
passed since he and I have met), remarks that the sassigassity
of that dog is indeed surprising; and evermore this jocular
conceit will live in my remembrance fresh and unfading,
overtopping all possible jokes, unto the end of time. Or now,
I learn with bitter tears how poor Jane Shore, dressed all in
white, and with her brown hair hanging down, went starving
through the streets; or how George Barnwell killed the
worthiest uncle that ever man had, and was afterwards so
12 A CHRISTMAS TREE
sorry for it that he ought to have been let off. Comes swift to
comfort me, the Pantomime—stupendous Phenomenon!—
when clowns are shot from loaded mortars into the great
chandelier, bright constellation that it is; when Harlequins,
covered all over with scales of pure gold, twist and sparkle,
like amazing fish; when Pantaloon (whom I deem it no
irreverence to compare in my own mind to my grandfather)
puts red-hot pokers in his pocket, and cries “Here’s
somebody coming!” or taxes the Clown with petty larceny,
by saying, “Now, I sawed you do it!” when Everything is
capable, with the greatest ease, of being changed into
Anything; and “Nothing is, but thinking makes it so.” Now,
too, I perceive my first experience of the dreary sensation—
often to return in after-life—of being unable, next day, to get
back to the dull, settled world; of wanting to live for ever in
the bright atmosphere I have quitted; of doting on the little
Fairy, with the wand like a celestial Barber’s Pole, and
pining for a Fairy immortality along with her. Ah, she comes
back, in many shapes, as my eye wanders down the branches
of my Christmas Tree, and goes as often, and has never yet
stayed by me!
Out of this delight springs the toy-theatre,—there it is,
with its familiar proscenium, and ladies in feathers, in the
boxes!—and all its attendant occupation with paste and glue,
and gum, and water colours, in the getting-up of The Miller
and his Men, and Elizabeth, or the Exile of Siberia. In spite
of a few besetting accidents and failures (particularly an
unreasonable disposition in the respectable Kelmar, and
some others, to become faint in the legs, and double up, at
exciting points of the drama), a teeming world of fancies so
suggestive and all-embracing, that, far below it on my
Christmas Tree, I see dark, dirty, real Theatres in the day-
time, adorned with these associations as with the freshest
garlands of the rarest flowers, and charming me yet.
CHARLES DICKENS 13
But hark! The Waits are playing, and they break my
childish sleep! What images do I associate with the
Christmas music as I see them set forth on the Christmas
Tree? Known before all the others, keeping far apart from all
the others, they gather round my little bed. An angel,
speaking to a group of shepherds in a field; some travellers,
with eyes uplifted, following a star; a baby in a manger; a
child in a spacious temple, talking with grave men; a solemn
figure, with a mild and beautiful face, raising a dead girl by
the hand; again, near a city gate, calling back the son of a
widow, on his bier, to life; a crowd of people looking
through the opened roof of a chamber where he sits, and
letting down a sick person on a bed, with ropes; the same, in
a tempest, walking on the water to a ship; again, on a sea-
shore, teaching a great multitude; again, with a child upon
his knee, and other children round; again, restoring sight to
the blind, speech to the dumb, hearing to the deaf, health to
the sick, strength to the lame, knowledge to the ignorant;
again, dying upon a Cross, watched by armed soldiers, a
thick darkness coming on, the earth beginning to shake, and
only one voice heard, “Forgive them, for they know not what
they do.”
Still, on the lower and maturer branches of the Tree,
Christmas associations cluster thick. School-books shut up;
Ovid and Virgil silenced; the Rule of Three, with its cool
impertinent inquiries, long disposed of; Terence and Plautus
acted no more, in an arena of huddled desks and forms, all
chipped, and notched, and inked; cricket-bats, stumps, and
balls, left higher up, with the smell of trodden grass and the
softened noise of shouts in the evening air; the tree is still
fresh, still gay. If I no more come home at Christmas-time,
there will be boys and girls (thank Heaven!) while the World
lasts; and they do! Yonder they dance and play upon the
14 A CHRISTMAS TREE
branches of my Tree, God bless them, merrily, and my heart
dances and plays too!
And I do come home at Christmas. We all do, or we all
should. We all come home, or ought to come home, for a
short holiday—the longer, the better—from the great
boarding-school, where we are for ever working at our
arithmetical slates, to take, and give a rest. As to going a
visiting, where can we not go, if we will; where have we not
been, when we would; starting our fancy from our Christmas
Tree!
Away into the winter prospect. There are many such
upon the tree! On, by low-lying, misty grounds, through fens
and fogs, up long hills, winding dark as caverns between
thick plantations, almost shutting out the sparkling stars; so,
out on broad heights, until we stop at last, with sudden
silence, at an avenue. The gate-bell has a deep, half-awful
sound in the frosty air; the gate swings open on its hinges;
and, as we drive up to a great house, the glancing lights grow
larger in the windows, and the opposing rows of trees seem
to fall solemnly back on either side, to give us place. At
intervals, all day, a frightened hare has shot across this
whitened turf; or the distant clatter of a herd of deer
trampling the hard frost, has, for the minute, crushed the
silence too. Their watchful eyes beneath the fern may be
shining now, if we could see them, like the icy dewdrops on
the leaves; but they are still, and all is still. And so, the lights
growing larger, and the trees falling back before us, and
closing up again behind us, as if to forbid retreat, we come to
the house.
There is probably a smell of roasted chestnuts and other
good comfortable things all the time, for we are telling
Winter Stories—Ghost Stories, or more shame for us—round
the Christmas fire; and we have never stirred, except to draw
a little nearer to it. But, no matter for that. We came to the
CHARLES DICKENS 15
house, and it is an old house, full of great chimneys where
wood is burnt on ancient dogs upon the hearth, and grim
portraits (some of them with grim legends, too) lower
distrustfully from the oaken panels of the walls. We are a
middle-aged nobleman, and we make a generous supper with
our host and hostess and their guests—it being Christmas-
time, and the old house full of company—and then we go to
bed. Our room is a very old room. It is hung with tapestry.
We don’t like the portrait of a cavalier in green, over the
fireplace. There are great black beams in the ceiling, and
there is a great black bedstead, supported at the foot by two
great black figures, who seem to have come off a couple of
tombs in the old baronial church in the park, for our
particular accommodation. But, we are not a superstitious
nobleman, and we don’t mind. Well! we dismiss our servant,
lock the door, and sit before the fire in our dressing-gown,
musing about a great many things. At length we go to bed.
Well! we can’t sleep. We toss and tumble, and can’t sleep.
The embers on the hearth burn fitfully and make the room
look ghostly. We can’t help peeping out over the
counterpane, at the two black figures and the cavalier—that
wicked-looking cavalier—in green. In the flickering light
they seem to advance and retire: which, though we are not by
any means a superstitious nobleman, is not agreeable. Well!
we get nervous—more and more nervous. We say “This is
very foolish, but we can’t stand this; we’ll pretend to be ill,
and knock up somebody.” Well! we are just going to do it,
when the locked door opens, and there comes in a young
woman, deadly pale, and with long fair hair, who glides to
the fire, and sits down in the chair we have left there,
wringing her hands. Then, we notice that her clothes are wet.
Our tongue cleaves to the roof of our mouth, and we can’t
speak; but, we observe her accurately. Her clothes are wet;
her long hair is dabbled with moist mud; she is dressed in the
16 A CHRISTMAS TREE
fashion of two hundred years ago; and she has at her girdle a
bunch of rusty keys. Well! there she sits, and we can’t even
faint, we are in such a state about it. Presently she gets up,
and tries all the locks in the room with the rusty keys, which
won’t fit one of them; then, she fixes her eyes on the portrait
of the cavalier in green, and says, in a low, terrible voice,
“The stags know it!” After that, she wrings her hands again,
passes the bedside, and goes out at the door. We hurry on our
dressing-gown, seize our pistols (we always travel with
pistols), and are following, when we find the door locked.
We turn the key, look out into the dark gallery; no one there.
We wander away, and try to find our servant. Can’t be done.
We pace the gallery till daybreak; then return to our deserted
room, fall asleep, and are awakened by our servant (nothing
ever haunts him) and the shining sun. Well! we make a
wretched breakfast, and all the company say we look queer.
After breakfast, we go over the house with our host, and then
we take him to the portrait of the cavalier in green, and then
it all comes out. He was false to a young housekeeper once
attached to that family, and famous for her beauty, who
drowned herself in a pond, and whose body was discovered,
after a long time, because the stags refused to drink of the
water. Since which, it has been whispered that she traverses
the house at midnight (but goes especially to that room
where the cavalier in green was wont to sleep), trying the old
locks with the rusty keys. Well! we tell our host of what we
have seen, and a shade comes over his features, and he begs
it may be hushed up; and so it is. But, it’s all true; and we
said so, before we died (we are dead now) to many
responsible people.
There is no end to the old houses, with resounding
galleries, and dismal state-bedchambers, and haunted wings
shut up for many years, through which we may ramble, with
an agreeable creeping up our back, and encounter any
CHARLES DICKENS 17
number of ghosts, but (it is worthy of remark perhaps)
reducible to a very few general types and classes; for, ghosts
have little originality, and “walk” in a beaten track. Thus, it
comes to pass, that a certain room in a certain old hall, where
a certain bad lord, baronet, knight, or gentleman, shot
himself, has certain planks in the floor from which the blood
will not be taken out. You may scrape and scrape, as the
present owner has done, or plane and plane, as his father did,
or scrub and scrub, as his grandfather did, or burn and burn
with strong acids, as his great-grandfather did, but, there the
blood will still be—no redder and no paler—no more and no
less—always just the same. Thus, in such another house
there is a haunted door, that never will keep open; or another
door that never will keep shut, or a haunted sound of a
spinning-wheel, or a hammer, or a footstep, or a cry, or a
sigh, or a horse’s tramp, or the rattling of a chain. Or else,
there is a turret-clock, which, at the midnight hour, strikes
thirteen when the head of the family is going to die; or a
shadowy, immovable black carriage which at such a time is
always seen by somebody, waiting near the great gates in the
stable-yard. Or thus, it came to pass how Lady Mary went to
pay a visit at a large wild house in the Scottish Highlands,
and, being fatigued with her long journey, retired to bed
early, and innocently said, next morning, at the breakfast-
table, “How odd, to have so late a party last night, in this
remote place, and not to tell me of it, before I went to bed!”
Then, every one asked Lady Mary what she meant? Then,
Lady Mary replied, “Why, all night long, the carriages were
driving round and round the terrace, underneath my
window!” Then, the owner of the house turned pale, and so
did his Lady, and Charles Macdoodle of Macdoodle signed
to Lady Mary to say no more, and every one was silent.
After breakfast, Charles Macdoodle told Lady Mary that it
was a tradition in the family that those rumbling carriages on
18 A CHRISTMAS TREE
the terrace betokened death. And so it proved, for, two
months afterwards, the Lady of the mansion died. And Lady
Mary, who was a Maid of Honour at Court, often told this
story to the old Queen Charlotte; by this token that the old
King always said, “Eh, eh? What, what? Ghosts, ghosts? No
such thing, no such thing!” And never left off saying so, until
he went to bed.
Or, a friend of somebody’s whom most of us know,
when he was a young man at college, had a particular friend,
with whom he made the compact that, if it were possible for
the Spirit to return to this earth after its separation from the
body, he of the twain who first died, should reappear to the
other. In course of time, this compact was forgotten by our
friend; the two young men having progressed in life, and
taken diverging paths that were wide asunder. But, one night,
many years afterwards, our friend being in the North of
England, and staying for the night in an inn, on the Yorkshire
Moors, happened to look out of bed; and there, in the
moonlight, leaning on a bureau near the window, steadfastly
regarding him, saw his old college friend! The appearance
being solemnly addressed, replied, in a kind of whisper, but
very audibly, “Do not come near me. I am dead. I am here to
redeem my promise. I come from another world, but may not
disclose its secrets!” Then, the whole form becoming paler,
melted, as it were, into the moonlight, and faded away.
Or, there was the daughter of the first occupier of the
picturesque Elizabethan house, so famous in our
neighbourhood. You have heard about her? No! Why, She
went out one summer evening at twilight, when she was a
beautiful girl, just seventeen years of age, to gather flowers
in the garden; and presently came running, terrified, into the
hall to her father, saying, “Oh, dear father, I have met
myself!” He took her in his arms, and told her it was fancy,
but she said, “Oh no! I met myself in the broad walk, and I
CHARLES DICKENS 19
was pale and gathering withered flowers, and I turned my
head, and held them up!” And, that night, she died; and a
picture of her story was begun, though never finished, and
they say it is somewhere in the house to this day, with its
face to the wall.
Or, the uncle of my brother’s wife was riding home on
horseback, one mellow evening at sunset, when, in a green
lane close to his own house, he saw a man standing before
him, in the very centre of a narrow way. “Why does that man
in the cloak stand there!” he thought. “Does he want me to
ride over him?” But the figure never moved. He felt a
strange sensation at seeing it so still, but slackened his trot
and rode forward. When he was so close to it, as almost to
touch it with his stirrup, his horse shied, and the figure glided
up the bank, in a curious, unearthly manner—backward, and
without seeming to use its feet—and was gone. The uncle of
my brother’s wife, exclaiming, “Good Heaven! It’s my
cousin Harry, from Bombay!” put spurs to his horse, which
was suddenly in a profuse sweat, and, wondering at such
strange behaviour, dashed round to the front of his house.
There, he saw the same figure, just passing in at the long
French window of the drawing-room, opening on the ground.
He threw his bridle to a servant, and hastened in after it. His
sister was sitting there, alone. “Alice, where’s my cousin
Harry?” “Your cousin Harry, John?” “Yes. From Bombay. I
met him in the lane just now, and saw him enter here, this
instant.” Not a creature had been seen by any one; and in that
hour and minute, as it afterwards appeared, this cousin died
in India.
Or, it was a certain sensible old maiden lady, who died
at ninety-nine, and retained her faculties to the last, who
really did see the Orphan Boy; a story which has often been
incorrectly told, but, of which the real truth is this—because
it is, in fact, a story belonging to our family—and she was a
20 A CHRISTMAS TREE
connexion of our family. When she was about forty years of
age, and still an uncommonly fine woman (her lover died
young, which was the reason why she never married, though
she had many offers), she went to stay at a place in Kent,
which her brother, an Indian-Merchant, had newly bought.
There was a story that this place had once been held in trust
by the guardian of a young boy; who was himself the next
heir, and who killed the young boy by harsh and cruel
treatment. She knew nothing of that. It has been said that
there was a Cage in her bedroom in which the guardian used
to put the boy. There was no such thing. There was only a
closet. She went to bed, made no alarm whatever in the
night, and in the morning said composedly to her maid when
she came in, “Who is the pretty forlorn-looking child who
has been peeping out of that closet all night?” The maid
replied by giving a loud scream, and instantly decamping.
She was surprised; but she was a woman of remarkable
strength of mind, and she dressed herself and went
downstairs, and closeted herself with her brother. “Now,
Walter,” she said, “I have been disturbed all night by a
pretty, forlorn-looking boy, who has been constantly peeping
out of that closet in my room, which I can’t open. This is
some trick.” “I am afraid not, Charlotte,” said he, “for it is
the legend of the house. It is the Orphan Boy. What did he
do?” “He opened the door softly,” said she, “and peeped out.
Sometimes, he came a step or two into the room. Then, I
called to him, to encourage him, and he shrunk, and
shuddered, and crept in again, and shut the door.” “The
closet has no communication, Charlotte,” said her brother,
“with any other part of the house, and it’s nailed up.” This
was undeniably true, and it took two carpenters a whole
forenoon to get it open, for examination. Then, she was
satisfied that she had seen the Orphan Boy. But, the wild and
terrible part of the story is, that he was also seen by three of
CHARLES DICKENS 21
her brother’s sons, in succession, who all died young. On the
occasion of each child being taken ill, he came home in a
heat, twelve hours before, and said, Oh, Mamma, he had
been playing under a particular oak-tree, in a certain
meadow, with a strange boy—a pretty, forlorn-looking boy,
who was very timid, and made signs! From fatal experience,
the parents came to know that this was the Orphan Boy, and
that the course of that child whom he chose for his little
playmate was surely run.
Legion is the name of the German castles, where we sit
up alone to wait for the Spectre—where we are shown into a
room, made comparatively cheerful for our reception—
where we glance round at the shadows, thrown on the blank
walls by the crackling fire—where we feel very lonely when
the village innkeeper and his pretty daughter have retired,
after laying down a fresh store of wood upon the hearth, and
setting forth on the small table such supper-cheer as a cold
roast capon, bread, grapes, and a flask of old Rhine wine—
where the reverberating doors close on their retreat, one after
another, like so many peals of sullen thunder—and where,
about the small hours of the night, we come into the
knowledge of divers supernatural mysteries. Legion is the
name of the haunted German students, in whose society we
draw yet nearer to the fire, while the schoolboy in the corner
opens his eyes wide and round, and flies off the footstool he
has chosen for his seat, when the door accidentally blows
open. Vast is the crop of such fruit, shining on our Christmas
Tree; in blossom, almost at the very top; ripening all down
the boughs!
Among the later toys and fancies hanging there—as idle
often and less pure—be the images once associated with the
sweet old Waits, the softened music in the night, ever
unalterable! Encircled by the social thoughts of Christmas-
time, still let the benignant figure of my childhood stand
22 A CHRISTMAS TREE
unchanged! In every cheerful image and suggestion that the
season brings, may the bright star that rested above the poor
roof, be the star of all the Christian World! A moment’s
pause, O vanishing tree, of which the lower boughs are dark
to me as yet, and let me look once more! I know there are
blank spaces on thy branches, where eyes that I have loved
have shone and smiled; from which they are departed. But,
far above, I see the raiser of the dead girl, and the Widow’s
Son; and God is good! If Age be hiding for me in the unseen
portion of thy downward growth, O may I, with a grey head,
turn a child’s heart to that figure yet, and a child’s
trustfulness and confidence!
Now, the tree is decorated with bright merriment, and
song, and dance, and cheerfulness. And they are welcome.
Innocent and welcome be they ever held, beneath the
branches of the Christmas Tree, which cast no gloomy
shadow! But, as it sinks into the ground, I hear a whisper
going through the leaves. “This, in commemoration of the
law of love and kindness, mercy and compassion. This, in
remembrance of Me!”